Salaams from Abu Simbel, Egypt

We woke up at 4am to take a 3hr bus ride to visit the famous temple of Abu Simbel for 2 hours. Yes, 6 hrs transit for a 2 hr trip. You're only in Egypt once right? I was all excited because I had seen a picture in this papyrus store in Cairo (behind the man holding a stalk of papyrus) and said to Tim, "Man I hope we see that." Because in my mind that's where the final scene of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade went down. Before people get all upset about my astounding lack of movie knowledge, An already told me that scene actually happened at Petra. Whatevs. "Hahaha very funny Dr. Jones!"

We travel to Abu Simbel in a large convoy of 10+ other tourist buses, all with police escorts. This is for security purposes as there have been recent attacks on tourists as early as July 2005.
I'm of the mind that going in more low key would be better, but we visited safe and sound so I can't complain.

The temple itself used to sit on much lower ground. When they decided to dam the Nile to finally wrest control of seasonal floods and droughts away from the Gods, the land behind the dam became one of the largest man-made lakes in the world, Lake Nasser. To save this famous temple, the Egyptians made a call to the world (UNESCO) after the dam had been built to help fund a project that would physically move the entire temple clear of the new lake. Clever Egyptians.

Temples all follow the same basic layout: huge facade, inner courtyard, some hippostyle halls (large column-bedecked halls with hyphy style), and then the holy-of-the-holies, the inner sanctuary where a statue of a god (and as such, the god itself) would sit.

This temple was cut into the actual moutainside. When they moved it, they literally cut the face of the mountain into bite-sized chunks and moved them one by one to the new site. Some of the fine cutting remarkably was done by handsaws. Incredible.

These temples were built by Ramses II, he of the burgeoning ego. He actually built his baby-mama, Nefertari, a temple too. This was the second temple ever built for a woman in Egypt (the first belonging to that sexy lady, Nefertiti). Ramses in his generosity had six huge statues cut into the facade of her temple. Four of them were of himself, two were of his ladyfriend.

Good stuff, Ramses! That's high comedy. See if you can find them!